Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a climate control system for a vehicle interior, with a housing, a cooling device, and a heating device.
Description of the Background Art
Climate control systems are used for conditioning the air in vehicle interiors. It is routinely possible to regulate both the amount of air blown into the interior and the temperature of the blown-in air by these systems. Numerous devices, which enable ventilation, heating, or air conditioning, are known for this purpose from the prior art.
Simple designs of a climate control system envisage providing only one temperature zone, so that there is the same or at least approximately the same temperature in the entire vehicle interior or the vehicle interior is supplied with air that cannot be regulated separately for the different interior areas, however. Only one desired temperature for the entire interior can be specified by the vehicle occupants. Higher-quality climate control systems also offer the possibility of ventilating and tempering a number of zones individually.
In distributor housings of climate control systems, depending on the number of climate-controlled zones, a different number of flow channels and flap elements is provided for this purpose, which allow individual adjustment of the air amount and temperature for the individual zones. The air in this case is released into the interior over different outflow openings, assigned to the particular zones.
DE 103 34 500 A1, which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 6,772,833, discloses a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system for the independent supplying of four zones within a vehicle interior. The housing of the climate control system has four outlets for this purpose, whereby each of the tempered zones is assigned an outlet. The system has an evaporator that can be used for cooling the air and a heater core that can be used for heating the air.
DE 10 2004 033 402 B4, which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 7,478,670, discloses a modular system for constructing a 1-to-4-zone climate control system for vehicles. To this end, a plurality of air distribution devices and a plurality of air tempering devices are provided, which are placed within the same housing.
A disadvantage of the prior art solutions in particular is that the distributor housings used in known climate control systems are adapted specifically to the number of zones to be tempered; this results in a great variety of variants, which is not conducive to the preferred use of interchangeable parts.